parent than
ever; amazement at her keen and morbid generalizations.

"How old are you, Eunice?"

"Twenty-four," she replied--"oh, I know what you're going to say: that I
have my whole life before me, and all that. But I haven't. My life is
all behind me."

"'I am the Captain of my Soul,
I am the Master of my Fate,'"

I quoted.

"Yes, you are; but I am not," she replied simply, and turned and looked
at me with her hopeless eyes.

Poor, unfortunate Eunice! That night, as we walked home together, she
revealed a little more about herself by telling me that she had recently
been discharged from the hospital on "the Island." I did not need to
inquire the nature of the illness that had left her face so white and
drawn. Brief as my experience had been among the humble inmates of the
"home," I had learned the expediency of not being too solicitous
regarding the precise facts of such cases.

The next day was Saturday, and still no Bessie. As we worked we
speculated as to her absence, and decided to spend the afternoon looking
her up. Meanwhile, although I had been managing to do my work a little
better each day, Eunice had not been succeeding so well. Her apathy had
been increasing daily, until she had lost any interest she might ever
have had in trying to do her work well. On this morning the forewoman
was obliged to give her repeated and sharp reproofs for soiling her
materials and for dawdling over her work.

"You seem to like to work," Eunice said once, breaking a long silence.

"Not any better than you do, only I've got to, and I try to make the
best of it."

"Yes, you do. You like to work, and I don't, and that's the difference
between us. And it's all the difference in the world, too. If I liked
work for its own sake, like you do, there'd be some hope for me living
things down."

"I wonder," she whispered, again breaking a long silence--"I wonder if
Bessie had any man after her."

I looked up suddenly, perhaps indignantly, and my reply was not
encouraging to any conjectures along this line, as Eunice saw quickly.

"I'm sorry I offended you," she added hastily; "but I didn't think
anything wrong of Bessie--you know I didn't. Only I've watched the boss
following her around with his eyes ever since we came here to work. You
didn't see, for you don't know as much about their devilment as I do;
but I tell you, if anything was ever to happen that poor little girl
through any man, I'd choke him to